1. Field of Invention
This invention is related to the evacuation from buildings that are three or more stories high in a fast and continuous method where a person fixed to a harness and hanging on a disc support is lowered to safety through a tube using a lesser pressure at the top of the tube and a higher pressure at the bottom of the tube. Also, its use is intended to also send firefighters and rescue persons upward to the upper floors to rescue persons that need help during a terrorist attack or a fire.
2. Prior Art
After the 9-11 Twin Towers tragedy in New York and other catastrophes on buildings where human lives were lost, I decided to find a way to innovate the very obsolete ways of dealing with a fire in buildings where many persons would be defenseless and could not escape.
It was necessary to find a better way of evacuating people from buildings on fire with better equipment than is currently available in the market. At the time of the incident at the World Trade Center, it was also noticeable that the firefighters had an almost impossible task of getting to the upper levels because they had to use the same stairwell going up that the escapees were using going down to escape from the building.
In the early years of firemen and fire trucks, the best way to save persons in distress was by lowering them using a ladder that the fire engine truck had when it arrived to the site, where the fireman had to sometimes risk his own life to get these people down the ladder. Once the first person was on the ground, the brave fireman would sometimes be subject to deadly smoke inhalation while trying to get back and climb the ladder for a second time to find another person, who perhaps was with a child that would not go down the ladder due to panic. The fireman would have to wait until the child fainted or was calmed to get him down while at the same time other evacuees were waiting for the fireman to arrive to the assigned window of the building on fire to be rescued.
Many had to jump from high places and fall to a rescue device, such as a ring, that sometimes has over 8 men to hold it, abandoning more responsible tasks while in the rescue. The life saving process was slow. It ended in tragedies that added up costing many lives, and only a few would be alive to tell us about the story of the moments of terror that they had lived. The rescue equipment and available firefighter systems have changed very slowly over the years, and every day there is more need for a solution to this condition.
Nowadays the evacuation problem in case of an emergency is broader. With more buildings, and taller and taller buildings being constructed, more and more people are living or working in them than ever before. We have to add the unfortunate burden of having to deal with terrorist, arsonists, and lunatics who are repeatedly thinking of what, where, and when to strike to cause damage. There are occasions in a terrorist attack or fire that when the situation becomes so critical that the people entrapped by the fire or the smoke would finally decide to jump from the roof of the buildings to the ground because they would feel hopeless even knowing that with this action they would end their lives.
There are a number of U.S. patents and publications related to escape devices, but none has the advantages of the present invention.
Studies in areas related to pneumatic tube escape and rescue systems or people escape systems using air pressurized methods also have no similar disclosures as the present invention.
For example, the following patents were investigated thoroughly:
In the present invention, I present a vacuum pressure at the top of the tube or at the top of the disc support where in Pelley U.S. Pat. No. 4,372,423 a vacuum pressure on top of the parachute is not mentioned. The top of the tube in the Pelley system is open and there are no connotations on Pelley's claims that the balloon shaped parachute requires a vacuum pressure on its top, nor is it understood by looking at the Pelley patent. I understand that my invention does not conflict with the idea present in the Pelley patent.
In Marcu (U.S. Pat. No. 5,597,358) no vacuum pressure is mentioned or implied. Since Marcu needs an open top or an opening above the capsule to release the air contained at the upper side of the capsule while going upward with the central capsule valve closed, even though in claim 1 and in the 9th paragraph of the 24 paragraphs Marcu mention that he has an adjustable Droseling valve (a flow valve) at the upper part of the tube, this would still not imply having a vacuum pressure in the system. Marcu also has to have the top open to free air when his capsule drops at a free fall speed. In no instance may there be a vacuum pressure in the upper area of the tube in Marcu. This would be a slowing mechanism when Marcu is trying to accelerate. This reasoning is made because in all instances during the climbing of the capsule and the free fall of the capsule, Marcu has to have atmospheric pressure above the capsule in order to have his capsule go up to the highest point before and after the capsule drops on a free fall, which implies that Marcu may not have any type of negative or vacuum pressures in the system, otherwise it would not perform properly. As for the stopping of the capsule at the end of the run, Marcu uses the central valve in the capsule with the desmodromic mechanism (lever actuated valve) in the closed position to decelerate and stop the capsule with positive pressure (Marcu also has a set of springs at the bottom to have an additional mechanical way of stopping the capsule in case there is a mishap if the valve does not close properly). Therefore at all times the capsule is controlled with a positive pressure. Marcu also mentions the Droselling valve that is placed from the inside to the outside at the bottom of the tube where this valve is used to release the positive pressure when bringing the capsule to a stop. This mechanism is not similar to the present invention, especially because the invention that Marcu discloses is not related to escape devices.
On the contrary, the vacuum and/or negative pressures are pertinent to the present invention and are not known to have been mentioned before in prior inventions. The stopping of the present invention with a vacuum pressure for an escape device is a novelty and these are not implied in the Marcu system.
Another fact about the Marcu system is that the valves, being a Desmodromic valve or a Droselling valve, are variable valves and in the present invention the holes and/or preset valves are intended to stay open (not variable) due to the care that must be exerted due to the fact that the present invention deals with the fall of live persons. The present invention shows that there is an optimum pattern in the preset valve arrangement, the amount of preset valves or holes, the sequence and location of these preset valves on the length of the tube.
Fuhrmann (U.S. Pat. No. 7,188,705) is a patent related to an escape system consisting of a cup that falls through a tube controlled by a positive pressure exerted below the cup formed escape device. It defers from the present invention in various ways. First, Fuhrmann forms a cup where a person is sitting in the cups base, whereas the present invention has a disc support that is placed at the top of the escapee. Second, the decelerating mechanism on the Fuhrmann system is created by reducing the width of the tube at several consecutive intervals thus reducing the diameter of the tube and controlling the escape of the air flow. In the present invention, however, the air is dissipated by an arrangement of holes or preset valves that are placed from the inside to the outside of the tube. Third, the fall control of the Fuhrmann invention is obtained by two iris valves placed in the pathway of the tube one after the other, where in the present invention acceleration/deceleration is exerted by a vacuum pressure above the disc support, or a pressure difference between the upper and lower side of the disc support, without a valve in the cross section of the tube. Fourth, the Fuhrmann invention slows down due to a positive pressure below the cup whereas in the present invention for the escapees the acceleration and the deceleration are controlled through a vacuum pressure.
Xia (U.S. Publication No. 20030116380) uses forced air induced in the descent of escapees. The jets of Xia have an exterior pressure of high inward free air pressure of over 1.5 psi to 6 psi in pressure. Xia uses a powerful jet to stop the persons from falling at the end of the tube, which could be dangerous. To obtain control of a falling object that measures basically 200 square inches on a very tight tube, as in Xia, would need at least 6 psi (pound per square inch) of air. The turbine would have to be very big as this type of free air flow at 6 psi would have a large loss. Falling through a duct with a direct flow of air while avoiding from being hit against the ground floor is believed to be impractical.